DEAR BROTHER AND SISTER,--I must take advantage of the opportunity now
presented to write you, but I shall necessarily be dull, as I feel
uncommonly stupid. We have had a hard trip this time. Left Saint Louis
three weeks ago on the Pennsylvania. The weather was very cold, and the
ice running densely. We got 15 miles below town, landed the boat, and
then one pilot. Second Mate and four deck hands took the sounding boat
and shoved out in the ice to hunt the channel. They failed to find it,
and the ice drifted them ashore. The pilot left the men with the boat
and walked back to us, a mile and a half. Then the other pilot and
myself, with a larger crew of men started out and met with the same fate.
We drifted ashore just below the other boat. Then the fun commenced. We
made fast a line 20 fathoms long, to the bow of the yawl, and put the men
(both crews) to it like horses, on the shore. Brown, the pilot, stood in
the bow, with an oar, to keep her head out, and I took the tiller. We
would start the men, and all would go well till the yawl would bring up
on a heavy cake of ice, and then the men would drop like so many
ten-pins, while Brown assumed the horizontal in the bottom of the boat.
After an hour's hard work we got back, with ice half an inch thick on the
oars. Sent back and warped up the other yawl, and then George (the first
mentioned pilot,) and myself, took a double crew of fresh men and tried
it again. This time we found the channel in less than half an hour,
and landed on an island till the Pennsylvania came along and took us off.
The next day was colder still. I was out in the yawl twice, and then we
got through, but the infernal steamboat came near running over us. We
went ten miles further, landed, and George and I cleared out again--found
the channel first trial, but got caught in the gorge and drifted
helplessly down the river. The Ocean Spray came along and started into
the ice after us, but although she didn't succeed in her kind intention
of taking us aboard, her waves washed us out, and that was all we wanted.
We landed on an island, built a big fire and waited for the boat. She